One thing that cervical cancer awareness overlooks is that HPV causes not only that cancer but also can play a role in penile, vaginal, urethral, anal, and head and neck cancers. In fact, a recent study found that about 1 in 10 men and almost 4 in 100 women are orally infected with HPV, the most common sexually transmitted virus in the United States, and HPV-related head and neck cancer rates are higher among men. Further, HPV-related oral cancers have been on the rise for about two decades now, and HPV is now responsible for about 50% of oral cancers today.

Research also shows that about 50% of college age women acquire an HPV infection within four years of becoming sexually active. In addition, an infected mother can pass HPV to her baby during childbirth, and the virus can populate the child’s larynx, causing recurrent growths that block the respiratory tract and require surgical removal.

The remainder of this post appeared initially on the Parents of Kids with Infectious Diseasesite, which provides information for preventing infectious disease in addition to supporting parents whose children have them. As insidious as HPV is, the vast majority of HPV infections can be prevented now with a vaccine.

Have you or a loved one ever had an abnormal Pap test result? If precancerous cells were identified, the cause was almost undoubtedly infection with human papillomavirus (HPV).Almost all cases of cervical cancerarise because of infection with this virus. Yet a vaccine can prevent infection with the strains that most commonly cause cervical cancer.

A vaccine against cancer. It’s true.

For the vaccine to work, though, a woman must have it before HPV infects her. You may find it difficult to look at your daughter, especially a pre-teen daughter, and think of that scenario. But the fact is that even if your daughter avoids all sexual contact until, say, her wedding night, she can still contract HPV from her partner. As we noted above, it happens to bethe most common sexually transmitted infection.

About 20 million Americans have an HPV infection, and 6 million people become newly infected every year. Half of the people who are ever sexually active pick up an HPV infection in a lifetime. That means your daughter, even if she waits until her wedding night, has a 1 in 2 chance of contracting the virus. Unless it’s a strain that causes genital warts, HPV usually produces no symptoms, and the infected person doesn’t even know they’ve been infected.

Until the cancer shows up.

And it can show up in more places than the cervix. This virus, you see, favors a certain kind of tissue, one that happens to be present in several parts of you. This tissue, a type of epithelium, is a thin layer of the skin and mucous membranes. It’s available for viral invasion in the cervix, vagina, vulva, anus, and the mouth and pharynx. In fact, HPV is poised to replace tobacco as the major cause of oral cancers in the United States.

The virus can even sometimes pass from mother to child, causingrecurrent respiratory papillomatosis, the recurrent growths in the throat that must be removed periodically and can sometimes become cancerous. It strikes about 2000 children each year in the United States.

How does a virus cause cancer? To understand that, you must first understand cancer. You may know that cells reproduce by dividing, and that cancer occurs when cells divide out of control. Behind most cancers is a malfunction in the molecules that tell cells to stop dividing. These molecules operate in a chain reaction of signaling, like a series of well-timed stoplights along a boulevard. If one starts sending an inappropriate “go” signal or fails to send a “stop” signal, the cell divides, making more cells just like it that also lack the right signals. If your body’s immune system doesn’t halt this inappropriate growth, we call it cancer.

The blueprint for building these “stop” molecules is in your genes, in your DNA sequences. As a virus, HPV also requires a blueprint to make more viruses. Viruses use the division machinery of the host cell—in you—to achieve reproduction by stealthily inserting their own DNA blueprint into the host DNA.

Sometimes, when it’s finished with the host, a virus leaves a little bit of its DNA behind. If that leftover DNA is in the middle of the blueprint for a “stop” molecule, the cell won’t even notice. It will use the contaminated instructions to build a molecule, one that no longer functions in stopping cell division. The result can be cancer.

Of the 150 HPV types or strains, about 40 of which pass through sexual contact, two in particular are associated with cancer,types 16 and 18. They are the ones that may persist for years and eventually change the cellular blueprint. The vaccines developed against those two strains are, therefore, anti-cancer vaccines.

Without a successful viral infection, viral DNA can’t disrupt your DNA. That’s what the HPV vaccine achieves against the two strains responsible forabout 70% of cervical cancers. Recent high-profile people have made claims about negative effects of this vaccine, claims that have beenthoroughly debunked. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as always offersaccurate informationabout the side effects associated with available HPV vaccines.

This achievement against cancer, including prevention of almost 100% of precancerous cervical changes related to types 16 and 18, is important.

Worldwide, a half million women receive a cervical cancer diagnosis each year, and 250,000 women die from it. These women are somebody’s daughter, wife, sister, friend. Women from all kinds of backgrounds, with all kinds of sexual histories.

Women whose precancerous cervical changes are identified in time often still must undergo uncomfortable and sometimes painful procedures to get rid of the precancerous cells. These invasive procedures includecone biopsiesthat require shots to numb the cervix and removal of a chunk of tissue from it. Cone biopsies carry a risk of causing infertility or miscarriage or preterm delivery. A vaccine for your daughter could prevent it all.

HPV doesn’t care if your daughter has had sex before. It’s equally oblivious to whether the epithelium it infects is in the cervix or in the mouth or pharynx or in an adult or a child. What it does respond to is antibodies that a body makes in response to the vaccine stimulus.

Even if your daughter’s first and only sex partner passes along one of the cancer-associated strains, if she’s been vaccinated, her antibodies will take that virus out cold. It’s a straightforward prevention against a lifetime of worry—and a premature death.

For more info: Facts about theHPV vaccinefrom the National Cancer Institute.

The four basic categories of molecules for building life are carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids.

Carbohydrates serve many purposes, from energy to structure to chemical communication, as monomers or polymers.

Lipids, which are hydrophobic, also have different purposes, including energy storage, structure, and signaling.

Proteins, made of amino acids in up to four structural levels, are involved in just about every process of life.

The nucleic acids DNA and RNA consist of four nucleotide building blocks, and each has different purposes.

The longer version

Life is so diverse and unwieldy, it may surprise you to learn that we can break it down into four basic categories of molecules. Possibly even more implausible is the fact that two of these categories of large molecules themselves break down into a surprisingly small number of building blocks. The proteins that make up all of the living things on this planet and ensure their appropriate structure and smooth function consist of only 20 different kinds of building blocks. Nucleic acids, specifically DNA, are even more basic: only four different kinds of molecules provide the materials to build the countless different genetic codes that translate into all the different walking, swimming, crawling, oozing, and/or photosynthesizing organisms that populate the third rock from the Sun.

Big Molecules with Small Building Blocks

The functional groups, assembled into building blocks on backbones of carbon atoms, can be bonded together to yield large molecules that we classify into four basic categories. These molecules, in many different permutations, are the basis for the diversity that we see among living things. They can consist of thousands of atoms, but only a handful of different kinds of atoms form them. It’s like building apartment buildings using a small selection of different materials: bricks, mortar, iron, glass, and wood. Arranged in different ways, these few materials can yield a huge variety of structures.

We encountered functional groups and the SPHONC in Chapter 3. These components form the four categories of molecules of life. These Big Four biological molecules are carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids. They can have many roles, from giving an organism structure to being involved in one of the millions of processes of living. Let’s meet each category individually and discover the basic roles of each in the structure and function of life.

Carbohydrates

You have met carbohydrates before, whether you know it or not. We refer to them casually as “sugars,” molecules made of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. A sugar molecule has a carbon backbone, usually five or six carbons in the ones we’ll discuss here, but it can be as few as three. Sugar molecules can link together in pairs or in chains or branching “trees,” either for structure or energy storage.

When you look on a nutrition label, you’ll see reference to “sugars.” That term includes carbohydrates that provide energy, which we get from breaking the chemical bonds in a sugar called glucose. The “sugars” on a nutrition label also include those that give structure to a plant, which we call fiber. Both are important nutrients for people.

Sugars serve many purposes. They give crunch to the cell walls of a plant or the exoskeleton of a beetle and chemical energy to the marathon runner. When attached to other molecules, like proteins or fats, they aid in communication between cells. But before we get any further into their uses, let’s talk structure.

The sugars we encounter most in basic biology have their five or six carbons linked together in a ring. There’s no need to dive deep into organic chemistry, but there are a couple of essential things to know to interpret the standard representations of these molecules.

Check out the sugars depicted in the figure. The top-left molecule, glucose, has six carbons, which have been numbered. The sugar to its right is the same glucose, with all but one “C” removed. The other five carbons are still there but are inferred using the conventions of organic chemistry: Anywhere there is a corner, there’s a carbon unless otherwise indicated. It might be a good exercise for you to add in a “C” over each corner so that you gain a good understanding of this convention. You should end up adding in five carbon symbols; the sixth is already given because that is conventionally included when it occurs outside of the ring.

On the left is a glucose with all of its carbons indicated. They’re also numbered, which is important to understand now for information that comes later. On the right is the same molecule, glucose, without the carbons indicated (except for the sixth one). Wherever there is a corner, there is a carbon, unless otherwise indicated (as with the oxygen). On the bottom left is ribose, the sugar found in RNA. The sugar on the bottom right is deoxyribose. Note that at carbon 2 (*), the ribose and deoxyribose differ by a single oxygen.

The lower left sugar in the figure is a ribose. In this depiction, the carbons, except the one outside of the ring, have not been drawn in, and they are not numbered. This is the standard way sugars are presented in texts. Can you tell how many carbons there are in this sugar? Count the corners and don’t forget the one that’s already indicated!

If you said “five,” you are right. Ribose is a pentose (pent = five) and happens to be the sugar present in ribonucleic acid, or RNA. Think to yourself what the sugar might be in deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA. If you thought, deoxyribose, you’d be right.

The fourth sugar given in the figure is a deoxyribose. In organic chemistry, it’s not enough to know that corners indicate carbons. Each carbon also has a specific number, which becomes important in discussions of nucleic acids. Luckily, we get to keep our carbon counting pretty simple in basic biology. To count carbons, you start with the carbon to the right of the non-carbon corner of the molecule. The deoxyribose or ribose always looks to me like a little cupcake with a cherry on top. The “cherry” is an oxygen. To the right of that oxygen, we start counting carbons, so that corner to the right of the “cherry” is the first carbon. Now, keep counting. Here’s a little test: What is hanging down from carbon 2 of the deoxyribose?

If you said a hydrogen (H), you are right! Now, compare the deoxyribose to the ribose. Do you see the difference in what hangs off of the carbon 2 of each sugar? You’ll see that the carbon 2 of ribose has an –OH, rather than an H. The reason the deoxyribose is called that is because the O on the second carbon of the ribose has been removed, leaving a “deoxyed” ribose. This tiny distinction between the sugars used in DNA and RNA is significant enough in biology that we use it to distinguish the two nucleic acids.

In fact, these subtle differences in sugars mean big differences for many biological molecules. Below, you’ll find a couple of ways that apparently small changes in a sugar molecule can mean big changes in what it does. These little changes make the difference between a delicious sugar cookie and the crunchy exoskeleton of a dung beetle.

Sugar and Fuel

A marathon runner keeps fuel on hand in the form of “carbs,” or sugars. These fuels provide the marathoner’s straining body with the energy it needs to keep the muscles pumping. When we take in sugar like this, it often comes in the form of glucose molecules attached together in a polymer called starch. We are especially equipped to start breaking off individual glucose molecules the minute we start chewing on a starch.

Double X Extra: A monomer is a building block (mono = one) and a polymer is a chain of monomers. With a few dozen monomers or building blocks, we get millions of different polymers. That may sound nutty until you think of the infinity of values that can be built using only the numbers 0 through 9 as building blocks or the intricate programming that is done using only a binary code of zeros and ones in different combinations.

Our bodies then can rapidly take the single molecules, or monomers, into cells and crack open the chemical bonds to transform the energy for use. The bonds of a sugar are packed with chemical energy that we capture to build a different kind of energy-containing molecule that our muscles access easily. Most species rely on this process of capturing energy from sugars and transforming it for specific purposes.

Polysaccharides: Fuel and Form

Plants use the Sun’s energy to make their own glucose, and starch is actually a plant’s way of storing up that sugar. Potatoes, for example, are quite good at packing away tons of glucose molecules and are known to dieticians as a “starchy” vegetable. The glucose molecules in starch are packed fairly closely together. A string of sugar molecules bonded together through dehydration synthesis, as they are in starch, is a polymer called a polysaccharide (poly = many; saccharide = sugar). When the monomers of the polysaccharide are released, as when our bodies break them up, the reaction that releases them is called hydrolysis.

Double X Extra: The specific reaction that hooks one monomer to another in a covalent bond is called dehydration synthesis because in making the bond–synthesizing the larger molecule–a molecule of water is removed (dehydration). The reverse is hydrolysis (hydro = water; lysis = breaking), which breaks the covalent bond by the addition of a molecule of water.

Although plants make their own glucose and animals acquire it by eating the plants, animals can also package away the glucose they eat for later use. Animals, including humans, store glucose in a polysaccharide called glycogen, which is more branched than starch. In us, we build this energy reserve primarily in the liver and access it when our glucose levels drop.

Whether starch or glycogen, the glucose molecules that are stored are bonded together so that all of the molecules are oriented the same way. If you view the sixth carbon of the glucose to be a “carbon flag,” you’ll see in the figure that all of the glucose molecules in starch are oriented with their carbon flags on the upper left.

The orientation of monomers of glucose in polysaccharides can make a big difference in the use of the polymer. The glucoses in the molecule on the top are all oriented “up” and form starch. The glucoses in the molecule on the bottom alternate orientation to form cellulose, which is quite different in its function from starch.

Storing up sugars for fuel and using them as fuel isn’t the end of the uses of sugar. In fact, sugars serve as structural molecules in a huge variety of organisms, including fungi, bacteria, plants, and insects.

The primary structural role of a sugar is as a component of the cell wall, giving the organism support against gravity. In plants, the familiar old glucose molecule serves as one building block of the plant cell wall, but with a catch: The molecules are oriented in an alternating up-down fashion. The resulting structural sugar is called cellulose.

That simple difference in orientation means the difference between a polysaccharide as fuel for us and a polysaccharide as structure. Insects take it step further with the polysaccharide that makes up their exoskeleton, or outer shell. Once again, the building block is glucose, arranged as it is in cellulose, in an alternating conformation. But in insects, each glucose has a little extra added on, a chemical group called an N-acetyl group. This addition of a single functional group alters the use of cellulose and turns it into a structural molecule that gives bugs that special crunchy sound when you accidentally…ahem…step on them.

These variations on the simple theme of a basic carbon-ring-as-building-block occur again and again in biological systems. In addition to serving roles in structure and as fuel, sugars also play a role in function. The attachment of subtly different sugar molecules to a protein or a lipid is one way cells communicate chemically with one another in refined, regulated interactions. It’s as though the cells talk with each other using a specialized, sugar-based vocabulary. Typically, cells display these sugary messages to the outside world, making them available to other cells that can recognize the molecular language.

Lipids: The Fatty Trifecta

Starch makes for good, accessible fuel, something that we immediately attack chemically and break up for quick energy. But fats are energy that we are supposed to bank away for a good long time and break out in times of deprivation. Like sugars, fats serve several purposes, including as a dense source of energy and as a universal structural component of cell membranes everywhere.

Fats: the Good, the Bad, the Neutral

Turn again to a nutrition label, and you’ll see a few references to fats, also known as lipids. (Fats are slightly less confusing that sugars in that they have only two names.) The label may break down fats into categories, including trans fats, saturated fats, unsaturated fats, and cholesterol. You may have learned that trans fats are “bad” and that there is good cholesterol and bad cholesterol, but what does it all mean?

Let’s start with what we mean when we say saturated fat. The question is, saturated with what? There is a specific kind of dietary fat call the triglyceride. As its name implies, it has a structural motif in which something is repeated three times. That something is a chain of carbons and hydrogens, hanging off in triplicate from a head made of glycerol, as the figure shows. Those three carbon-hydrogen chains, or fatty acids, are the “tri” in a triglyceride. Chains like this can be many carbons long.

Double X Extra: We call a fatty acid a fatty acid because it’s got a carboxylic acid attached to a fatty tail. A triglyceride consists of three of these fatty acids attached to a molecule called glycerol. Our dietary fat primarily consists of these triglycerides.

Triglycerides come in several forms. You may recall that carbon can form several different kinds of bonds, including single bonds, as with hydrogen, and double bonds, as with itself. A chain of carbon and hydrogens can have every single available carbon bond taken by a hydrogen in single covalent bond. This scenario of hydrogen saturation yields a saturated fat. The fat is saturated to its fullest with every covalent bond taken by hydrogens single bonded to the carbons.

Saturated fats have predictable characteristics. They lie flat easily and stick to each other, meaning that at room temperature, they form a dense solid. You will realize this if you find a little bit of fat on you to pinch. Does it feel pretty solid? That’s because animal fat is saturated fat. The fat on a steak is also solid at room temperature, and in fact, it takes a pretty high heat to loosen it up enough to become liquid. Animals are not the only organisms that produce saturated fat–avocados and coconuts also are known for their saturated fat content.

The top graphic above depicts a triglyceride with the glycerol, acid, and three hydrocarbon tails. The tails of this saturated fat, with every possible hydrogen space occupied, lie comparatively flat on one another, and this kind of fat is solid at room temperature. The fat on the bottom, however, is unsaturated, with bends or kinks wherever two carbons have double bonded, booting a couple of hydrogens and making this fat unsaturated, or lacking some hydrogens. Because of the space between the bumps, this fat is probably not solid at room temperature, but liquid.

You can probably now guess what an unsaturated fat is–one that has one or more hydrogens missing. Instead of single bonding with hydrogens at every available space, two or more carbons in an unsaturated fat chain will form a double bond with carbon, leaving no space for a hydrogen. Because some carbons in the chain share two pairs of electrons, they physically draw closer to one another than they do in a single bond. This tighter bonding result in a “kink” in the fatty acid chain.

In a fat with these kinks, the three fatty acids don’t lie as densely packed with each other as they do in a saturated fat. The kinks leave spaces between them. Thus, unsaturated fats are less dense than saturated fats and often will be liquid at room temperature. A good example of a liquid unsaturated fat at room temperature is canola oil.

A few decades ago, food scientists discovered that unsaturated fats could be resaturated or hydrogenated to behave more like saturated fats and have a longer shelf life. The process of hydrogenation–adding in hydrogens–yields trans fat. This kind of processed fat is now frowned upon and is being removed from many foods because of its associations with adverse health effects. If you check a food label and it lists among the ingredients “partially hydrogenated” oils, that can mean that the food contains trans fat.

Double X Extra: A triglyceride can have up to three different fatty acids attached to it. Canola oil, for example, consists primarily of oleic acid, linoleic acid, and linolenic acid, all of which are unsaturated fatty acids with 18 carbons in their chains.

Why do we take in fat anyway? Fat is a necessary nutrient for everything from our nervous systems to our circulatory health. It also, under appropriate conditions, is an excellent way to store up densely packaged energy for the times when stores are running low. We really can’t live very well without it.

Phospholipids: An Abundant Fat

You may have heard that oil and water don’t mix, and indeed, it is something you can observe for yourself. Drop a pat of butter–pure saturated fat–into a bowl of water and watch it just sit there. Even if you try mixing it with a spoon, it will just sit there. Now, drop a spoon of salt into the water and stir it a bit. The salt seems to vanish. You’ve just illustrated the difference between a water-fearing (hydrophobic) and a water-loving (hydrophilic) substance.

Generally speaking, compounds that have an unequal sharing of electrons (like ions or anything with a covalent bond between oxygen and hydrogen or nitrogen and hydrogen) will be hydrophilic. The reason is that a charge or an unequal electron sharing gives the molecule polarity that allows it to interact with water through hydrogen bonds. A fat, however, consists largely of hydrogen and carbon in those long chains. Carbon and hydrogen have roughly equivalent electronegativities, and their electron-sharing relationship is relatively nonpolar. Fat, lacking in polarity, doesn’t interact with water. As the butter demonstrated, it just sits there.

There is one exception to that little maxim about fat and water, and that exception is the phospholipid. This lipid has a special structure that makes it just right for the job it does: forming the membranes of cells. A phospholipid consists of a polar phosphate head–P and O don’t share equally–and a couple of nonpolar hydrocarbon tails, as the figure shows. If you look at the figure, you’ll see that one of the two tails has a little kick in it, thanks to a double bond between the two carbons there.

Phospholipids form a double layer and are the major structural components of cell membranes. Their bend, or kick, in one of the hydrocarbon tails helps ensure fluidity of the cell membrane. The molecules are bipolar, with hydrophilic heads for interacting with the internal and external watery environments of the cell and hydrophobic tails that help cell membranes behave as general security guards.

The kick and the bipolar (hydrophobic and hydrophilic) nature of the phospholipid make it the perfect molecule for building a cell membrane. A cell needs a watery outside to survive. It also needs a watery inside to survive. Thus, it must face the inside and outside worlds with something that interacts well with water. But it also must protect itself against unwanted intruders, providing a barrier that keeps unwanted things out and keeps necessary molecules in.

Phospholipids achieve it all. They assemble into a double layer around a cell but orient to allow interaction with the watery external and internal environments. On the layer facing the inside of the cell, the phospholipids orient their polar, hydrophilic heads to the watery inner environment and their tails away from it. On the layer to the outside of the cell, they do the same.

As the figure shows, the result is a double layer of phospholipids with each layer facing a polar, hydrophilic head to the watery environments. The tails of each layer face one another. They form a hydrophobic, fatty moat around a cell that serves as a general gatekeeper, much in the way that your skin does for you. Charged particles cannot simply slip across this fatty moat because they can’t interact with it. And to keep the fat fluid, one tail of each phospholipid has that little kick, giving the cell membrane a fluid, liquidy flow and keeping it from being solid and unforgiving at temperatures in which cells thrive.

Steroids: Here to Pump You Up?

Our final molecule in the lipid fatty trifecta is cholesterol. As you may have heard, there are a few different kinds of cholesterol, some of which we consider to be “good” and some of which is “bad.” The good cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein, or HDL, in part helps us out because it removes the bad cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein or LDL, from our blood. The presence of LDL is associated with inflammation of the lining of the blood vessels, which can lead to a variety of health problems.

But cholesterol has some other reasons for existing. One of its roles is in the maintenance of cell membrane fluidity. Cholesterol is inserted throughout the lipid bilayer and serves as a block to the fatty tails that might otherwise stick together and become a bit too solid.

Cholesterol’s other starring role as a lipid is as the starting molecule for a class of hormones we called steroids or steroid hormones. With a few snips here and additions there, cholesterol can be changed into the steroid hormones progesterone, testosterone, or estrogen. These molecules look quite similar, but they play very different roles in organisms. Testosterone, for example, generally masculinizes vertebrates (animals with backbones), while progesterone and estrogen play a role in regulating the ovulatory cycle.

Double X Extra: A hormone is a blood-borne signaling molecule. It can be lipid based, like testosterone, or short protein, like insulin.

Proteins

As you progress through learning biology, one thing will become more and more clear: Most cells function primarily as protein factories. It may surprise you to learn that proteins, which we often talk about in terms of food intake, are the fundamental molecule of many of life’s processes. Enzymes, for example, form a single broad category of proteins, but there are millions of them, each one governing a small step in the molecular pathways that are required for living.

Levels of Structure

Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. A few amino acids strung together is called a peptide, while many many peptides linked together form a polypeptide. When many amino acids strung together interact with each other to form a properly folded molecule, we call that molecule a protein.

For a string of amino acids to ultimately fold up into an active protein, they must first be assembled in the correct order. The code for their assembly lies in the DNA, but once that code has been read and the amino acid chain built, we call that simple, unfolded chain the primary structure of the protein.

This chain can consist of hundreds of amino acids that interact all along the sequence. Some amino acids are hydrophobic and some are hydrophilic. In this context, like interacts best with like, so the hydrophobic amino acids will interact with one another, and the hydrophilic amino acids will interact together. As these contacts occur along the string of molecules, different conformations will arise in different parts of the chain. We call these different conformations along the amino acid chain the protein’s secondary structure.

Once those interactions have occurred, the protein can fold into its final, or tertiary structure and be ready to serve as an active participant in cellular processes. To achieve the tertiary structure, the amino acid chain’s secondary interactions must usually be ongoing, and the pH, temperature, and salt balance must be just right to facilitate the folding. This tertiary folding takes place through interactions of the secondary structures along the different parts of the amino acid chain.

The final product is a properly folded protein. If we could see it with the naked eye, it might look a lot like a wadded up string of pearls, but that “wadded up” look is misleading. Protein folding is a carefully regulated process that is determined at its core by the amino acids in the chain: their hydrophobicity and hydrophilicity and how they interact together.

In many instances, however, a complete protein consists of more than one amino acid chain, and the complete protein has two or more interacting strings of amino acids. A good example is hemoglobin in red blood cells. Its job is to grab oxygen and deliver it to the body’s tissues. A complete hemoglobin protein consists of four separate amino acid chains all properly folded into their tertiary structures and interacting as a single unit. In cases like this involving two or more interacting amino acid chains, we say that the final protein has a quaternary structure. Some proteins can consist of as many as a dozen interacting chains, behaving as a single protein unit.

A Plethora of Purposes

What does a protein do? Let us count the ways. Really, that’s almost impossible because proteins do just about everything. Some of them tag things. Some of them destroy things. Some of them protect. Some mark cells as “self.” Some serve as structural materials, while others are highways or motors. They aid in communication, they operate as signaling molecules, they transfer molecules and cut them up, they interact with each other in complex, interrelated pathways to build things up and break things down. They regulate genes and package DNA, and they regulate and package each other.

As described above, proteins are the final folded arrangement of a string of amino acids. One way we obtain these building blocks for the millions of proteins our bodies make is through our diet. You may hear about foods that are high in protein or people eating high-protein diets to build muscle. When we take in those proteins, we can break them apart and use the amino acids that make them up to build proteins of our own.

Nucleic Acids

How does a cell know which proteins to make? It has a code for building them, one that is especially guarded in a cellular vault in our cells called the nucleus. This code is deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA. The cell makes a copy of this code and send it out to specialized structures that read it and build proteins based on what they read. As with any code, a typo–a mutation–can result in a message that doesn’t make as much sense. When the code gets changed, sometimes, the protein that the cell builds using that code will be changed, too.

Biohazard!The names associated with nucleic acids can be confusing because they all start with nucle-. It may seem obvious or easy now, but a brain freeze on a test could mix you up. You need to fix in your mind that the shorter term (10 letters, four syllables), nucleotide, refers to the smaller molecule, the three-part building block. The longer term (12 characters, including the space, and five syllables), nucleic acid, which is inherent in the names DNA and RNA, designates the big, long molecule.

DNA vs. RNA: A Matter of Structure

DNA and its nucleic acid cousin, ribonucleic acid, or RNA, are both made of the same kinds of building blocks. These building blocks are called nucleotides. Each nucleotide consists of three parts: a sugar (ribose for RNA and deoxyribose for DNA), a phosphate, and a nitrogenous base. In DNA, every nucleotide has identical sugars and phosphates, and in RNA, the sugar and phosphate are also the same for every nucleotide.

So what’s different? The nitrogenous bases. DNA has a set of four to use as its coding alphabet. These are the purines, adenine and guanine, and the pyrimidines, thymine and cytosine. The nucleotides are abbreviated by their initial letters as A, G, T, and C. From variations in the arrangement and number of these four molecules, all of the diversity of life arises. Just four different types of the nucleotide building blocks, and we have you, bacteria, wombats, and blue whales.

RNA is also basic at its core, consisting of only four different nucleotides. In fact, it uses three of the same nitrogenous bases as DNA–A, G, and C–but it substitutes a base called uracil (U) where DNA uses thymine. Uracil is a pyrimidine.

DNA vs. RNA: Function Wars

An interesting thing about the nitrogenous bases of the nucleotides is that they pair with each other, using hydrogen bonds, in a predictable way. An adenine will almost always bond with a thymine in DNA or a uracil in RNA, and cytosine and guanine will almost always bond with each other. This pairing capacity allows the cell to use a sequence of DNA and build either a new DNA sequence, using the old one as a template, or build an RNA sequence to make a copy of the DNA.

These two different uses of A-T/U and C-G base pairing serve two different purposes. DNA is copied into DNA usually when a cell is preparing to divide and needs two complete sets of DNA for the new cells. DNA is copied into RNA when the cell needs to send the code out of the vault so proteins can be built. The DNA stays safely where it belongs.

RNA is really a nucleic acid jack-of-all-trades. It not only serves as the copy of the DNA but also is the main component of the two types of cellular workers that read that copy and build proteins from it. At one point in this process, the three types of RNA come together in protein assembly to make sure the job is done right.

NYC Campaign to alert the authorities if you see something suspicious. Antibodies are like the citizens that tell our body that something fishy is going down.

By Biology Editor, Jeanne Garbarino

There is a campaign sponsored by NYC’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) encouraging citizens to speak up if they see any activity or persons acting in a suspicious manner. Plastered all over buses, subways, and commuter rails are posters with the following message: If you see something, say something. This type of imagery reminds me very much of our own biological warning system programmed to, in essence, “speak up” should a suspicious character of the microscopic kind make it’s way into our bodies. It is through our immune response that our bodies “say something” in the event of infection.

At the very crux of the immune response are tiny proteins called antibodies, which are basically like the citizens that report any suspicious activities. Antibodies often travel in the blood stream, and upon crossing paths with a foreign invader (bacteria, virus, etc.), an antibody will flag it down and alert the “local authorities” of the body (aka immune cells).

For many years, scientists have been studying antibodies and their role in the immune response, revealing many aspects surrounding their structure and function. And through these studies, we have figured out how to use antibodies in ways that go beyond the immune system. For instance, antibodies against human chorionic growth hormone, or hCG, are the essential ingredients in home pregnancy tests. More recently, scientists have, in many ways, harnessed the power of antibodies for pharmaceutical uses. A very popular example of this is the drug Remicade, which is used to treat severe autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn’s Disease. But, what exactly are antibodies and how do they work?

Well, I am glad I asked me that question.

As I mentioned, antibodies are proteins that we make. Specifically, they are produced by specialized immune cells called B-cells, which are the main players during our humoral immune response. B-cells will either secrete an antibody, which can then float around the circulatory system, or the antibody can remain attached to the outside of the B-cell. If there is something “foreign” in our bodies, such as a virus or bacterium, antibodies will recognize and attach itself to the invader, which is scientifically referred to as an antigen. When an antibody attaches to an antigen, it signals to our body to get rid of it. Amazingly, each antibody can only recognize 1 antigen, which is why we need so many different types of antibodies!

To get a better idea of how antibodies work, it is important to learn their basic structure. Antibodies are ‘Y’ shaped proteins, and have both constant and variable regions. The constant region is the same among all antibodies within a specific class (there are several different classes), where as the variable region is the portion of the antibody that is designed to recognize a specific antigen.

To better explain this, consider the antibody to be a lacrosse stick. The “stick” part is the constant region, and the mesh part is the variable region. Now consider the lacrosse ball to be the antigen (i.e. bacterium or virus). Only the lacrosse ball that is a triangle can fit into the lacrosse stick with the triangle-shaped mesh pocket. The same is true for the circle. And so on. Once the ball fits into the mesh, meaning, once the antibody binds the antigen, a cascade of events is set off, essentially sounding the alarm. Under normal, healthy circumstances, we take care of the antigen and the infectious agent is removed. (Note: there are different classes of antibodies and each class has it’s own “stick” part.)

A basic analology for how antibodies work.

Building off our understanding of how antibodies work, scientists have been able to develop monoclonal antibody therapy, which is the use of specific antibodies to stimulate an immune response against a disease. For instance, we now use monoclonal antibody therapy to combat a variety of cancers by injecting cancer patients with antibodies designed to recognize specific components on the surface of tumor cells. This helps signal to the body that it should turn on the immune response and get rid of the tumor cells.

The list of conditions where monoclonal antibody is a potential therapy is growing, and includes a variety of autoimmune diseases and cancers, post-organ transplant therapy, human respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infections in children, and most recently hemophilia A. Also being explored is the use of monoclonal antibody therapy for addiction, which could essentially revolutionize how we can help people kick extremely difficult habits (i.e. cocaine or methamphetamine).

Despite the thousands of tedious and repetitive assays I’ve done using antibodies in my own laboratory, I know that I can never lose sight of how amazing these little proteins are.

———————————————-This post is a mental appetizer for another post on monoclonal antibodies by DXS tech editor, Jeffrey Perkel. His post specifically discusses the potential use of monoclonal antibodyto treat the X-linked blood disorder, hemophilia A. Read about it here.

Last week, the media got all excited about the possibility of a cure for HIV perinatal transmission. What was lacking was the recognition that the public remains largely ignorant about HIV in pregnant women. Yet with good wellness care, prevention, HIV testing, and medication,HIV transmission from mother to child can be close to zero. The public needs to know that women who are pregnant and HIV positive can also live good-quality lives, as can their children.

Thanks to Dr. Judy Levison, an obstetrician/gynecologist whose career centers on caring for HIV-pregnant women, I began to learn how scientific advancements in HIV-care make it possible for pregnant women with HIV and HIV-positive men to have children and not transmit the virus to their newborns. In the midst of this learning experience, I found out that a young woman I know, “Angela*,” was HIV positive and wanted to plan a pregnancy. I was shocked; I knew plenty of gay men with HIV, but rarely had I met a woman who had contracted the virus. Planning a pregnancy while being infected with HIV was something that I couldn’t imagine.

“Angela” is married and has lived with HIV for some years, with a low viral load by taking good care of herself and taking recommended antiretroviral therapy, when needed. She sought artificial insemination, one of several options available to HIV-affected couples. It worked. When she was planning her pregnancy, her parents were resistant. They worried that even though she is healthy now, that might change. They couldn’t imagine being saddled with taking care of a young child. Her parents’ resistance reminded me of the old coming-out stories we used to hear and how parents adapted to learning their child is gay. To their credit, both parents soon rose to the occasion. Angela and her spouse have a healthy toddler, and the grandparents love spending time with him.

Angela’s story isn’t everyone’s story. The hubbub at the recent 20th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections was not on the “functional cure” of the baby born to a pregnant woman with HIV, but on why, in this day and age, the mother doesn’t seem to have received the recommended prenatal care and antiretroviral therapy herself. Under what circumstances did she deliver? How did mom and baby get lost in the healthcare system? It’s far too easy to be captivated by a potential breakthrough and forget that plenty of people don’t get access to basic science-backed care that prevents HIV transmission in the first place.

As I describe below and as Angela’s experience illustrates, a lot of evidence shows that it is very safe for women with HIV to get pregnant, have healthy babies, and not transmit HIV to their children. Unfortunately, for many pregnant women with HIV, harsh judgments and inaccurate assumptions often carry the day. Let’s just say that HIV-positive moms and their kids have not earned the acceptance allotted to, say, a Magic Johnson, who has had HIV for decades, and with good HIV and wellness care, lives a good-quality life.

These inroads in science-based HIV prevention and care that have helped Johnson so much lag behind in poor and minority communities in the United States and low-resource countries around the world. HIV disproportionally affects African-Americans in the United States, and access to care, Medicaid cuts, and poverty reduce the chance that many people in need will receive good state-of-the-art prevention (regular testing, practicing safe sex, not sharing drug needles) and wellness care. Perinatal transmission could well rise in these communities.

Facing down ignorance

At first, being pregnant was not easy for Angela — not because her pregnancy was hard (it was not) — but because of the uneasiness some of her coworkers expressed about her becoming pregnant as an HIV-positive woman. Even though Angela worked in healthcare, some of her coworkers thought she had no business being pregnant. When she complained to her supervisor, the manager urged Angela to take it upon herself to educate staff about scientifically proven treatments for pregnant women with HIV that help moms stay well and prevent transmission to the baby. Angela asked instead for an in-service training, which was scheduled. Her colleagues’ attitudes turned around after the in-service.

It meant a lot to her to change the culture.

Angela had a normal term delivery, gave birth to a healthy baby, who is now a toddler, with no sign of HIV infection. Angela’s viral load remains undetectable. They are living healthy, high-quality lives like many other families, moms, and children.

The parents and prenatal planning

The ideal in the setting of HIV infection is that both partners are involved in preconception planning. Prevention of transmission of HIV from an HIV-positive father to an HIV-negative mom and fetus is now possible. The door is now open to HIV-positive men and women who want families but have HIV. Any plans they had to become parents have not simply vanished.

HIV research has advanced to the point that we now know that if HIV-positive individuals work with knowledgeable medical providers and have good access to proven practices, parents and children do quite well. Essential practices include:

Before trying to conceive, people should take antiretroviral drugs and have their infection under control, shown by a low viral load or undetectable levels of the virus (“undetectable” levels vary, depending on the lab) in their blood;

Couples are instructed to have unprotected sex only when the woman is ovulating. Current guidelines recommend using an ovulation prediction kit, which you can purchase at most drugstores.

Artificial insemination is another option that HIV-affected couples are using, as Angela did.

HIV testing is recommended routinely for all pregnant women, as well as for all non-pregnant adults and teens.

If a woman learns during her pregnancy for the first time that she is HIV infected, she can work with her healthcare provider to stay healthy, prevent mother-to-child transmission, and prevent passing HIV to her partner.

In general, people infected with HIV who are not pregnant begin taking anti-HIV medications when their CD4 counts fall below 500 cells/mm3 (HIV targets these immune cells and destroys them, compromising a person’s immunity). The medication regimen during pregnancy depends on whether or not you are taking medication to improve your own health or just your baby’s. In many cases, healthy women delay starting antiretroviral medication until the second trimester, which is when all women should be on HIV medication. However, HIV medication and interactions with other drugs and the fetus are complicated and require consultation with a physician. If women are diagnosed later in a pregnancy, they should start HIV drugs then. You can find detailed recommendations here.

During childbirth, women whose viral loads are still undetectable can have normal vaginal deliveries. However, according to the National Institutes of Health and other authorities, scheduled cesarean delivery at 38 weeks of gestation is recommended to reduce perinatal transmission of HIV for women with HIV-RNA levels >1,000 copies/mL or unknown HIV levels near the time of delivery, regardless of whether they were taking recommended antiretroviral drugs during pregnancy. The guidelines state that when there is a low rate of transmission (viral loads lower than 1000 copies/mL), the benefits of a scheduled c-section are unclear. Dr. Levison, an obstetrician/gynecologist at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, says that in her practice, women rarely need a cesarean section.

The newborn child

In the United States, breastfeeding is discouraged because HIV can be transmitted in breast milk. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the risk for HIV transmission goes up as much as 45%. However, the topic of breastfeeding remains controversial. In healthy women with no HIV history, the broad consensus is that breastfeeding is best, giving babies excellent nutrition and helping the infant bond with mom. And many parts of the world have problems with sanitation and dirty water, making breastfeeding preferable to mixing formula. Outside of the US, according to Levison, in the UK, breastfeeding guidelines are more liberal. Furthermore, in some cultures, women are afraid not to breastfeed for fear that they will be outed as having an HIV infection, according to Levison, so many treating physicians adapt practice to the culture, preferences of the mom. Internationally, for example, in Africa, women often breastfeed and remain on antiretroviral drugs during that time. Formula is also costly. In the US, poor moms are eligible for formula through the federal Women’s Infants and Children’s nutritional support program.

Besides breastfeeding, HIV-positive moms need to know that pre-chewing of food before feeding baby is a transmission risk.

As soon as a woman goes into labor and during childbirth, the infantmust begin a six-week course of the antiretroviral medication zidovudine (AZT). Current guidelines also state that the baby should be tested for HIV at 14 to 21 days, at 1 to 2 months, and again at 4 to 6 months. If the viral load remains undetectable after two tests, the baby is considered to not have gotten HIV.

Resolving resource disparities

The moms, dads, and kids with HIV have enormous potential to live healthy lives for decades on proven antiretroviral drugs.

In fact, a December 2012 CDC Fact Sheet states that the number of women with HIV giving birth in the United States increased approximately 30% from 6,000 to 7,000 in 2000 to 8700 in 2006. During that same time frame, the estimated number of perinatal infections per year in all 50 states and 5 dependent areas continued to decline.

It’s not all good news, though, because of marked disparities in resource allocation and pre- and perinatal care. According to CDC data, 63% of perinatal infections were in blacks/African-Americans; 22% were in Hispanics/Latinos, and 13% were in whites. That leaves a lot of work to be done in enhancing targeted prevention programs.

Another recent milestone is that the US Preventive Services Task Force is finally about to endorse universal HIV testing, long after the CDC backed such a move in 2006. This milestone is important to because it is also linked to health reform. All public and private health plans are required to provide coverage for U.S. Preventive Services Task Force-recommended preventive services without patient copayments.

With this availability, perhaps women might learn about an HIV infection before they become pregnant, giving them time to have their own treatment in place before it is too late to protect the baby. The case report of the baby cured of HIV gives a lot of hope, but even more preferable would be preventing HIV infection in the first place, through safe sex and not exchanging needles. Once people become infected, for whatever reason, their lives should no longer be viewed as if they are at in a holding pattern until death.

The world needs to know that just like every other mom, dads and pregnant women with HIV can parent children, stay healthy, and not transmit the virus to their babies. Paramount in this is universal HIV testing for adults and teens, prevention programs, and ensuring scientifically proven treatment of the mother before, during, and after her pregnancy.

Imagine if there was a vaccine that could prevent cancer. Everyone would want it, right?

Surprisingly, no. There IS a vaccine to prevent cervical cancer, which, according to the CDC, affects about 12,000 women every year. Unlike most cancers, cervical cancer is caused by a sexually transmitted virus, Human Papillomavirus, also known as HPV. The virus can cause abnormal cell growth in the cervix, which can turn cancerous. The vaccine, approved in 2006, works against many common strains of HPV.

The vaccine is recommended for girls ages 11-12, and also provided to women up through their early twenties. The goal is to protect girls long before they are ever sexually active, so that they never contract HPV in the first place. As of 2011, the vaccine is also recommended for adolescent boys.

Contracting HPV is so common that more than half of all sexually active men and women in the United States will become infected with HPV at some point in their lives. According to a CDC factsheet on the HPV vaccine, “about 20 million Americans are currently affected, and 6 million more are infected every year.” In most people, HPV infections never lead to symptoms but the virus can cause development of cervical cancer and, more rarely, cancers of the vagina and anus, as well as genital warts. Furthermore, men can develop cancer from HPV. The virus is transmitted through skin to skin contact, which reduces the efficacy of condoms at preventing the spread of this disease.

Yet, despite the dangers associated with HPV, only 33.9% of American girls, ages 13-17, reported to the CDC in 2010 that they had been fully vaccinated (3 doses) against HPV. When I mapped the state by state rates of vaccination, I found a dramatic distribution, from only 19% of girls in Idaho to nearly 60% in South Dakota and Rhode Island.

Map created by Kate Prengaman

Much of the resistance to vaccinating adolescent girls against cancer-causing HPV comes from many people who are uncomfortable with or resistant to the fact that adolescent girls will grow up and have sex. I expected to see a strong correlation between states with Abstinence-only sex education and low vaccination rates, but the pattern in the map is weaker than I had anticipated. I also considered that the cost of the vaccines might play a role, although if they are not covered by a family’s health insurance, there are federal programs in place to subsidize the cost. There’s also some correlation there, but again, not as strong as you see, for example, when mapping teenage birthrates.

Map created by Kate Prengaman

Clearly, the pink map, lovely as it is, does not provide an answer for why more adolescent girls are not receiving the HPV vaccine. There is an unfortunate anti-vaccination movement in this country, with people choosing not to protect their kids from dangerous diseases because of unfounded fears that vaccines can cause autism, among other things. Last fall, Michelle Bachmann even used a presidential debate to stir up more fears that the HPV vaccines could cause mental disabilities, a enormous error that the medical community quickly tried to correct.

The truth is that these vaccines are safe. The truth is that HPV is really common, and it can cause cancer, and if you ever have sex, you have a good chance of getting it. Why aren’t more parents of adolescents taking the lead on protecting their kids’ future health? If you have any ideas for other factors that might explain the patterns of vaccination, let me know in the comments and I will try adding to my map. Thanks!

About the guest author:

Kate Prengaman is a science writer and outdoor enthusiast currently based in Madison, WI. Formerly a botanist, Kate is pursuing her masters in science journalism at UW, reading and writing as much as possible. She loves talking to people, telling stories, finding adventures, geeking out over wildflowers, and eating delicious things. She blogs at Xylem.

“You are a consumer of science. As one, what bothers you about how science is offered to you? What questions do you have? How do you consume scientific information? How do you use it?”

She’s going to be blogging on the Forbes network, see her here, and I’m guessing this was the impetus for that particular set of questions.I had much to say in answer to her questions.

One of my biggest pet peeves is that the most sensational headlines are used- even if they are entirely inaccurate scientifically. For example the recent news about small pox and breast cancer. Headlines like, “New smallpox virus could ‘cure’ breast cancer, studies reveal.” How many ways is that wrong? Well, it’s not smallpox the researchers were using, it’s a vaccinia virus, which is in the same family as the smallpox virus. Big difference. For instance, there wasn’t a global effort to eradicate cowpox– another vaccinia family member. Just because the viruses are related doesn’t mean they are the same thing. Also, what’s with the quotation marks around cure?Maybe because it’s not actually a cure, not even a treatment, just an interesting experiment done in mice- but cure (even in quotes) makes for a better headline. [If you want to learn about the real science behind that crappy headline, here’s the original paper- “Vaccinia Virus GLV-1h153 Is Effective in Treating and Preventing Metastatic Triple-Negative Breast Cancer“]

Articles rarely cite their scientific sources- i.e. linking to the actual journal article they are writing about. For instance, the craptastic example above where the ‘journalist’ (how’s that for quotation marks?) not only failed to link to the original article, he didn’t even mention the journal it was published in, when it was published, or any other info (other than the lead author’s name) that would help a reader find the journal article or additional info on it.

As for sources, it’s important to distinguish for the reader between peer reviewed journal articles and mere opinion pieces on blogs. Take for instance the blog post I wrote aboutherethat appeared on the website of Psychology Today. Many news outlets picked it up and touted it as research that showed it was dangerous to let your infant ‘cry it out’ when really it was just a post (poorly researched, lacking citations, and full of unsupported conjecture and opinion) on the blog of a psychologist. A blog post is NOT the same thing as a peer reviewed journal article. Please journalists, know this!

Another gripe, accuracy is sacrificed for the sake of brevity, which completely defeats the purpose of sharing the science. See above yet again about smallpox as a ‘cure’ for breast cancer.

Another problem I have is the way the media handles funding sources for research studies- they always matter, it’s imperative that scientists report any conflicts of interest that funding sources might prove to be. However, they are not always a sign that researchers are ‘in cahoots’ with the companies that fund them. For instance, would you trust RJ Reynolds to fund unbiased research on smoking and cancer? Probably not. Thus, if at the end of a research article you see a company with a known bias and the findings support their assertions, you are right to be skeptical. However, sometimes the funding merely means a company paid for work to be done, regardless of the outcome. For instance, a pharma company that partners with an academic lab on basic science and published the results in a peer reviewed journal. Or, a drug company that funds the clinical trials for it’s drugs. That’s just the way it works- who else would fund the trial if not the manufacturer? If those types of studies are published in peer reviewed journals, they have been vetted to that extent. Further, with clinical trials, the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) oversees all those trials to help ensure they are unbiased and protect the patients involved as well as the public as a whole. The media seems unable to distinguish.

As for how I generally consume science/scientific information? It’s usually as follows- hear about it on the radio or read a lame article via Yahoo News/Strollerderby/The Stir/etc., assume the author is either full of bologna, got the science partly/mostly wrong, had their more level-headed title replaced by an editor, is totally biased, etc., then I track down the original research article, and possibly seek out commentaries on the work from reliable sources (SciAm blogs, Double X Science, fellow scientists, etc.).

What about how I use it? Well, obviously I’m a scientist, so I ‘use’ science/scientific information professionally every single (work) day to try and cure (no quotation marks) and/or treat cancer. In my personal life, science helps me make healthcare decisions for myself and my family, decide which products to buy or to avoid, answer questions about the natural world when my toddler asks, as material to blog about and use to dispel misconceptions held by myself and others.

However, a lot of the time I don’t necessarily even use the science I consume. Sometimes I just want to know it. I’m curious.

Pretty frequently people ask me, “How do you know that?” or “Why do you even know that?” I’m not sure how to answer. If it’s a medical question, a lot of the times the answer is, “Well, I have that body part and I want to know how it works.” Or, “Well, I’m taking that medicine, so I looked up how it works.” People forget that science is the basis of everything- it’s how everything works or came to be. While others seem to find it odd that I’m always looking up the science behind was I see/do/hear about, I find it odd that other don’t seem to question enough.

You’re taking that medicine, you’re having that surgery, you’re using that product right now- don’t you wonder how/why it works? Why aren’t you wondering?

The opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect or conflict with those of the DXS editorial team and its contributors.———————————————

Courtney Williams is a scientist, wife, and mother (in no particular order). She works in the oncology department of a biotech company in the burbs of NYC. She blogs about marriage, motherhood, and science at http://mommacommaphd.wordpress.com/.